


Bloody Noses and Crack’d Crowns

by StarsCrackedOpen (Misthia)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attraction, Best Friends, Birthday, Child Soldiers, Clone Wars, Coming of Age, Denial of Feelings, Developing Friendships, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Growing Up Together, Major Character Injury, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Missions Gone Wrong, Protective Ahsoka Tano, Protective Anakin Skywalker, Sparring, Unresolved Tension, War, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:46:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27085075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misthia/pseuds/StarsCrackedOpen
Summary: Ahsoka sees more than she should, and comes of age on the battlefield.Or: In which war hangs heavy on their souls, and shapes their paths.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker/Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 20
Kudos: 189





	Bloody Noses and Crack’d Crowns

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been a while. Still here, still writing, just super busy with school.
> 
> This isn’t part of “Things Carried, Unseen” — Like my other outside piece, it’s darker and less canon-compliant. There is nothing explicit in this one, per se, just one line that might push it to M. It’s also written in a different style than the others.
> 
> Written for Whumptober, and I think it gets there. Rated mostly for thoughts and one aforementioned reaction.

* * *

_“We must have bloody noses and crack'd crowns,_

_And pass them current too.”_

_\- William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Act II, Scene III_

* * *

Ahsoka turns fifteen in hyperspace, almost exactly three months to the day that she became a padawan. She honestly forgets it’s her birthday until Anakin comes into their cabin aboard the _Resolute_ and hands her a bag of nerf jerky. She blinks at it as he promises to take her to her favorite restaurant when they get back to Coruscant.

She looks up at him, confused. “Thanks, but what...?”

He stops, seeing her blank look, and his brow furrows. He sounds uncertain now. “It—it is your birthday, isn’t it Snips?”

She checks the chrono on the datapad she’s been staring at, and sure enough, it is. She’s surprised.

“I...I guess so. I guess I lost track of days.”

“It’s easy to do in hyperspace,” says Anakin, and glances at one of the several datapads she has strewn over the small table. He flops down onto the couch, stretching out, and suddenly looks like a bored nineteen-year-old, rather than an experienced general. “Studying star charts?”

“I was,” she says, tearing open the jerky and popping a piece in her mouth. “But I have an essay to finish for class too.”

He sits up, looking at her askance, as if it were _her_ choice. “Homework? You’re on a mission, padawan. You don’t have time for _homework_.”

She looks sidelong at him, agreeing. “Cils Poldan says that’s no excuse for turning in late assignments.”

Anakin rolls his eyes and snorts. “He hasn’t changed since I was a padawan, he used to say the same thing to me.” Her master smirks now. “But _I’m_ not a padawan anymore. I’ll deal with Poldan. We’re fighting a war, I need you to be focused on that.” Ahsoka nods, pushes aside the essay, and picks up a datapad with star charts. Anakin sighs.

“We have three more rotations in hyperspace to prepare, and it’s your birthday. Take the night off.”

She smiles, grateful. “Thank you,” she says and joins him on the couch, holding the bag out to him. He takes a piece and turns on the holoscreen, rolling his eyes again as he finds it tuned to a broadcast of one of the melodramas Obi-Wan favors. He flips to a Malastare podracing championship instead, propping his feet on the low table.

They don’t have much time these days for holos, but when they do, Ahsoka has noticed he never chooses anything sad or heavy. She doesn’t like to either, anymore. The war provides enough of that.

They watch for a while, passing the spiced meat back and forth, and during a commercial break Ahsoka’s eyes narrow and her head tilts. “You didn’t remember it was my birthday either until Obi-Wan told you, did you?”

He looks a little caught out. “I — you forgot too!”

Ahsoka giggles, because it’s _true._ Anakin smirks at her.

“Don’t worry, Snips. We’ll end this war soon, and then you can get back to your _homework_.”

She rolls her eyes and makes a sound in the back of her throat. “I like the _first_ part of that a lot more than the second.”

He laughs.

The podracing comes back on. As easy as she finds his presence, it’s hard to remember sometimes that they really haven’t known each other that long — and she realizes that she doesn’t know his birthday either. She makes a mental note to ask Obi-Wan and thank him, and Anakin keeps his promise the next time they’re back on Coruscant.

* * *

The war doesn’t end. Ahsoka gets used to sleeping in tents, to sharing those and cruiser cabins with Anakin and often Obi-Wan, and finally stops waking at every sound and bump in the night.

She notices one night months later — as they review battle plans for the following day — that the dozen white hairs at Obi-Wan’s right temple have doubled. She tips her head, trying to discern in the tent’s lantern-light and shadows if she’s seeing correctly. Anakin notices too.

“You’re getting grayer,” he says teasingly, and it’s not the first time Anakin’s said something just as she’s thought it too, or vice versa. She supposes that’s part of why they work well together.

“It’s dealing with you two that does it to me,” retorts Obi-Wan, managing to sound at once both thoroughly exasperated and deeply fond.

Anakin puts on an exaggerated, mock-wounded expression and Ahsoka giggles at both of them, at the unexpected levity of the moment. She notices the gray is creeping into Obi-Wan’s beard now too.

Obi-Wan smiles, then sighs and puts down the datapad he’s been reading.

“We should all get some rest. If tomorrow goes well, this war will be over soon.”

Anakin stretches out on his cot, all long limbs and confidence. “My plan is solid. It’ll work.”

* * *

The next day, Anakin’s plan doesn’t quite pan out. They are ambushed and outnumbered, but they’re holding their ground.

Ahsoka is deflecting blaster bolts and flying high on adrenaline — then staggers as if she’s been punched, confused. There’s a burning smell and there’s pain and she’s lying on the ground suddenly, her master’s face swimming above hers. She blinks, and Kix is there. Anakin is gone, though she can hear a familiar shout and the sound of a saber cutting through metal. She can hear Obi-Wan calling for Anakin and feels her master’s anger and guilt echo in the bond. She knows he’s afraid for _her_ , and in the cloud of shock she reaches for him through the link to reassure. “ _M’okay_ ,” she whispers.

Kix smiles down at her. “We’ve got you, Commander.” There’s a sharp prick at her neck and then darkness.

When Ahsoka comes to, she is in a medbay bed, and Anakin is sitting next to her looking at her with worry, while Obi-Wan stands against the wall and looks at him with much the same expression.

She understands, because she worries about Anakin too. Obi-Wan smiles and comes over as she blinks slowly. She’s sleepy and warm with painkillers and their proximity, and she feels Anakin’s relief in their link. Ahsoka is glad that they’re there, and that he’s _hers_ , her master, and in the haze smiles at Anakin and presses that feeling to him through the bond.

He looks almost stricken, reaching for her, and she pats clumsily at his hand as the drugs pull her under again.

* * *

Ahsoka improves, steadily. She knows she’s a better soldier, and she hopes she’s a better Jedi.

On her sixteenth birthday, they are returning from a mission when they crash-land on Felucia again — this time when the _Twilight_ decides to burn out two thrusters — and she looks at the riot of color, the luminescent flora and thinks, _there are worse planets to crash on._

Anakin leaves the ship, having comm’d for help — and for once luck is with them and a cruiser is fairly close. He shakes his head, tossing her a ration bar, and says, “Next year, I should just bring your present with me.”

Ahsoka laughs as she opens it. “Maybe next year, there’ll be leave to take.” Leave has been suspended for months, and it’s wearing on everyone.

He sits down next to her in the shade of a glowing amethyst plant. “Thinking of going somewhere?”

She considers. “I haven’t been to Shili in three years. It would be nice to visit again. Shaak Ti used to go once a year, before the war.”

Anakin shakes his head. “Still never been to Shili.”

Ahsoka grins. “You could come with me. I’ll show you how to hunt akul. Maybe I can teach _you_ something for once, Skyguy.”

He huffs a laugh. “You’ve taught me plenty, Snips.” He lets her bask in this for a moment and then adds, “Mostly about _patience_.”

Ahsoka trills in faux-outrage, elbowing him, and Anakin snickers. They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, and then he says, “I’d like that.”

She looks at him, a little surprised, and he shrugs one shoulder. “It would be nice to visit a new planet for a reason other than the war.”

Ahsoka can’t remember the last time she has done that either. Other than when she was first brought to Coruscant, has she ever? The thought sits uncomfortably in her stomach.

She smiles. “Then we’ll go.”

Anakin nods, and stretches his legs out. “Well, we’ve got time. Tell me about Shili.”

So Ahsoka does, telling him everything she can remember. Twilight falls, then night, and as the plants illuminate the planet with their jewel-like glow, it’s...peaceful. They sit under the wide leaves, bathed in purple light as they talk about Shili, and the war seems very far away.

The cruiser comes for them not long after, and the spell is broken. They board the ship and return to the present, and as the ship lifts off, Ahsoka reflects that it’s the best birthday she’s had in years.

* * *

Their next assignment is a diplomatic one which goes badly awry. The grand minister they were sent to negotiate with — well, _Obi-Wan_ was sent to negotiate with, she and Anakin are there for backup and to gather information about Separatist guerillas — is assassinated, poisoned by her own sister, a collaborator. Seppie forces storm the palace.

They are vastly outnumbered and forced to flee, and the mission is an abject failure, the planet falling into Separatist control and two allies killed.

They are remotely debriefed on the _Resolute_ and rerouted to Selonia to track Seppie-aligned smugglers through the vast sub-aquatic, subterranean tunnel system without any pause in between. The weight of the new mission combines with the failure of the last and hits her like a gut punch as soon as the holofeed cuts out. They are still in space, but she already feels underwater and underground.

She feels so _old_ suddenly, far too old for sixteen. Wasn’t the war supposed to be over three months ago? Six months? A year?

No one says the war will be over soon anymore.

They have their parts to play as always, as they are expected to — Obi-Wan the Negotiator, Anakin the Hero With No Fear — but she has realized that Obi-Wan is as skilled as he is because he has spent years telling _himself_ half-truths as well, negotiating his own denial, his own limits and weaknesses — and she knows Anakin is one of the latter.

(There is no judgment in this recognition; he is one of hers as well.)

As for her master, he _hates_ the epithet he’s been given, “The Hero With No Fear” — Ahsoka knows, has _tasted_ , Anakin’s fear. She knows it is too often too close, that in so many ways it drives him and his choices, his mercy and his ruthlessness both.

She knows all of these things without ever putting words to them. She knows the personal costs of their strengths as well as she knows her own.

She is the Apprentice, and so as defeated as she feels, as much as she understands and _should not_ — Ahsoka will fulfill her role as she always has, bright and headstrong, always moving forward. In truth, she simply doesn’t know what else to do.

She pulls up the Corellian system’s star charts. Ahsoka smiles a little too widely, cheeks tight, and is careful to have it reach her eyes. She is a little _too_ bright, a little too enthused — Obi-Wan smiles tiredly, patiently and Anakin scowls, asking what’s gotten into her.

Her throat tightens, and she will not say “Despair.”

* * *

Three weeks later, she leads a detachment to take a Seppie outpost. Anakin and Obi-Wan lure the bulk of the forces into open combat with the 501st, and Ahsoka goes to clear out the remaining defenders.

She is the first in, sabers glowing, leading the charge. It’s over quickly, and this has become easier, because they have become very good at what they do.

The team spreads out to secure the farthest reaches of the building, and she holds the entrance and turns in place, surveying the wreckage of the droids she cut down.

The blood _sings_ in her veins, and she can feel the wildness inside her she was warned about on Mortis sparking over her skin. She loves the fight though she knows she should _not_ , and she will tell herself later that it was only the togruta instinct to hunt.

A hand on her arm now, and she whirls. It’s only Anakin, Force presence as unruly as his hair, curls damp with sweat, lip split open. She _sees_ him then, bloodied and tousled from the battle, and she wants to tug him down and drag her tongue over his lip, taste what she knows is singing in his veins too.

They share this trait Jedi are not meant to have, are warned against. She’s felt it countless times between them, unspoken, and she can feel it now —humming between them in the Force, crackling. In the blink of an eye, another more primal _want_ prickles at the base of her skull and hangs in the tips of her lekku.

Suddenly it isn’t just his blood she wants to taste, it’s the curve of his mouth, the salt of his sweat, _all_ of him. She wants to wrap her body around his, to pull the tempest that is his Force presence over her and drown in it against his skin.

He says something now, her name, and it cuts through the haze. She blinks it away and tamps down hard on all of these urges, stows them deep and far from the bond. He looks away, eyes a little wide. Still heady, she wonders with a brief flicker of fear how much he sensed but dully knows it doesn’t matter, because if there’s one thing both she and Anakin have learned from Obi-Wan, it is how to _repress_.

She is nothing if not an attentive student.

After, she will pretend that the desire was fleeting, that it was only because her blood was up — though it has taken root behind her ribs and she can never quite shake it.

* * *

Half a year later they will pretend _together_ ; an unarmed sparring session meant to blow off steam starts playfully, then intensifies, goes to ground, and becomes grappling. He is strong but she is slippery, and when he finally pins her, both panting, they try to pretend that his cock isn’t pressing hard into her.

It’s too late. Desire hangs heavy between them, electric in the Force. This time she knows with certainty it comes from _both_ of them, and that makes her want surge as they stare at each other. They are synced in everything they do together, and so _this_...

Ahsoka shivers. In the dimming light of the evening, she sees his pupils blow and he freezes. Anakin _never_ freezes.

The expression on his face makes her shiver under him again, and he flings himself off of her as if he’s been burned, turning away. Ahsoka gets up, lekku tingling, heat sliding down her spine. Carefully keeping her voice light and level, she says, “I almost had you there.”

He doesn’t quite meet her eyes, muscle twitching in his jaw. His voice is rough. “Almost, Snips.”

She knows it’s the truth, easily denied in the double meaning of both their statements, but it means nothing because it can’t.

Nothing changes after, but this new current doesn’t dissipate, so they simply do not acknowledge it. It is yet another unspoken thing they share.

They still spar, but never grapple like that again.

* * *

The war drags on, and _on_.

She thinks one night, on another blurry planet in another blurry system, that she might be content.

Ahsoka takes in the scene, the cluster of campfires under the vast starry sky. The clones in their squads, singing badly and celebrating victory, toasting the fallen. She sits next to Anakin and Obi-Wan at their own fire, more subdued. Weariness permeates them all, but the warmth of success and the celebration around them buoys them up. Anakin is chortling into his cup at the exceptionally bawdy song the nearest squad is singing, while Obi-Wan’s eyebrow is raised and he’s hiding a smile in his beard.

They are in the midst of this seemingly endless war, and yet something whispers to Ahsoka that this contentedness she feels should be savored, _will not last_ , and she wonders what it says about her that right now, she is _happy_.

Ahsoka closes her eyes, and sears the moment into her memory.

The song ends, but the party continues, and she sinks deeper into thought.

War camps and cruisers and the _Twilight_ have become more a home than the temple. She has lost count of the skirmishes, the battles, the clankers felled, and — she realizes with a start — the sentients she has killed too.

She looks around again, and something has _shifted_ suddenly in her perception — the clones, bred for war, younger than her and yet fully grown by ten years old, are laughing and drinking around their fires though their fallen comrades’ bodies lie cold in a makeshift morgue on the edge of camp. Obi-Wan sits across from her, looking melancholy now, even grayer — too many hairs to count anymore — the deepened lines in his brow stark in the firelight as he stares into it and fingers his beard. After a minute he seems to come out of his reverie, and stands, bidding them goodnight and heading to the tent.

Her master stays beside her, and out of the corner of her eye she notices with some alarm that worry lines are starting to etch into his forehead. Anakin is just about to turn twenty-one, too young — even for a human — to have them. He radiates warmth in the chilly night, but his Presence is shot through with flickering shadows that make her shiver.

He notices, and smiles tiredly at her. “Cold, Snips?” He doesn’t wait for a response, just unpins his cloak and throws one end around her, teasing her for her bare arms and forgetting her own again. Ahsoka accepts this comfort, leaning into him as she has done a thousand times on a hundred planets. The bond hums. Like this, she feels his voice reverberate through his chest and her montrals. She can hear his crooked smile in his speech, and it lets her ignore the shadows.

They’ve all gotten good at _ignoring_.

He’s speaking again. “What are you gonna do when I forget my cloak or I’m not around?”

She doesn’t want to consider it, or the deafening silence of the temple quarters she will be sleeping in again in a few days. Ahsoka almost laughs as she realizes they won’t be staying for more than a week. The thought is almost as comforting as Anakin’s cloak around her.

Ahsoka had said once to Barriss, in a conversation that feels like it took place a lifetime ago, that she wasn’t sure how Anakin would do in peacetime. At the time, she thought he wouldn’t handle it well.

She wonders now if any of them will.

**_Fin._ **

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, please let me know what you think! Love it, hate it, or otherwise. Comments make my day.


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